Getting The Public To Listen To Good Science

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "We all know that false or misleading science headlines are all too common these days and that misleading media combined with an apathetic and undereducated public lead to widespread ignorance. But the real question is, how can this trend be reversed? At a session at the recent AAAS meeting, a study was discussed indicating that what matters most is how the information is portrayed. While people are willing to defer to experts on matters of low concern, for things that affect them directly, such as breast cancer or childhood diseases, expertise only counts for as much as giving off a 'sense of honesty and openness,' and that it matters far less than creating a sense of empathy in deciding who people will listen to. In other words, it's not enough to merely report on it as an expert. You need to make sure your report exudes a sense of honesty, openness, empathy, and maybe even a hint of humor."

People don't believe in it anymore

[Gothmolly]

People have been taught, for several generations now, that causality is optional, that science is for geeks, that geeks are there to serve the jocks, that man needs to serve the state, and that perception is reality. Why would they care about your silly little experiments?

Man In The Sky

[milsoRgen]

Well when a major chunk of the population believes the earth is only umpteen thousands of years old, I don't think a presentation of any style or quality is going to get them to listen to what science has to say in any meaningful capacity unless it easily and directly benefits them.

Just do what Global Warming Advocates Do

[Nova Express]

To ensure people heed your arguments:

1. Declare over and over again that there's no debate at all and that your side is absolutely right. Whenever they bring up objections, merely inform them that "the debate is over. Anthropogenic Global Warming is a scientific fact."
2. Paint all of your opponents as shills for your favorite bogeyman (Big Business/Republicans/The Jews/Etc.) "Everyone who opposes immediate action on global warming is an oil company shill."
3. Remember to hype the danger to the maximum possible extent unless people adopt your preferred "scientific" policies. "Unless we ban the automobile, the ice caps will melt."
4. No matter what evidence is presented, spin it as supporting your theory. "Hurricane Katrina? Global Warming. Record snowfalls? Weather disruption due to global warming."

Follow these steps and you're sure to have people believe your "correct" science.

Entertainment value

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Look how Discovery channel etc get hyped and dramatized and facts removed to make for a more entertaining package. Even the news is infotainment.

Anyway, what is Good Science? A lot of the more entertaining science is Bad Science. For example, Discovery Channel segments on dinosaurs often feature people making roaring extrapolations: find a tooth fragment and say that they have found something from a dinosaur that would have been 25 ft long and run at 40 mph. What bullshit.

What we have here

[ColdWetDog]

Is a failure to communicate ...

Unfortunately, this is a war that we are unlikely to win. The hearts and minds of the populace are mostly centered between the stomach and groin. What the AAS report is basically saying is that science has to "advertise" - just like everything else.

Then it's not "science". It's just one more religion / belief system in a pile of others out to get converts.

The only thing we can do is teach the scientific method - in schools, at home, in conversations. It's the only weapon we've got, however small.

schools

[wizardforce]

the only way we're going to see the public at large be able to evaluate claims and discard the "bad scinece"/pseudoscience is by starting in the schools. As long as there is a problem conveying basic science concepts to the younger members of our population, there is no hope of solving the problem in adults. Dover, Florida, Kansas etc. all examples where science was dumbed down, misrepresented or ignored entirely in favor of teaching pseudoscience that contributes nothing to the understanding of the world around people. It's terribly disturbing as a biologist to see that the educational system is as it stands, a complete and utter failure especially in regard to the major sciences and that there are little or no plans to remedy the situation.

Root of the Problem

[l33tlamer]

The lack of emphasis on Science, Maths and good ol' Logic during schooling, especially in the earlier years, is to blame for the lack of public interest in real science. Many of my relatives and friends just don't care about how things work, as long as they do. That, the natural curiosity to find answers for the "how" questions, is what is lacking in society today in general. The only time people want to know it seems, is if they are in danger or if their wallets are involved.

The problem is, the majority of the "ruling class" in management, government and all other areas are generally not scientifically inclined nor are they actively promoting science. They influence education policy and funding for research, which trickles down to the education system and the public's view of science.

I personally found algebra and calculus to be interesting and challenging, the latter is what drove a lot of my friends away, when I first learned it ages ago. I know that if I had worst teachers or if my father weren't an engineer, my feelings towards would have been quite different. Until scientists are more popular than movie stars and mathematicians are more well known than recording artists, the root of the problem will still be that science is just not popular enough to be seen as interesting or useful.

The fact that people actually care about Paris Hilton is also a nice solid data point in my suggestion that people's perspective on what's interesting and important is just waaaay off the mark from reality.

Re:Entertainment value

[UbuntuDupe]

That's not the Discovery Channel -- those are inferences of real, legitimate paleontologists.

And that's what scares me.

Re:Just do what Global Warming Advocates Do

[Black Art]

Except that Global Warming people actually have EVIDENCE. You don't.

The current problem is that we have too many people who are willing to tell lies to support their political views. They have found that the lies are much more acceptable when you have an authority figure telling them to the populace. Thus, you get Creationists pretending to be scientists when speaking to the public. The same goes with Global Warming deniers and other followers of Pseudoscience.

People don't trust science anymore because they have been lied to by people like you for so long they don't know what to trust or who to believe. One group of "scientists" tell them one thing and the next day another tells them something else.

We have gotten into this mess because people like you started to believe that Science somehow had to reflect their own political opinions, no matter what the evidence. (Like the melting polar icecaps.)

Widespread ignorance of science hurts everyone!

[SpaceWanderer]

If people can't understand basic science, how are they going to make proper decisions on issues that are of a scientific nature? Birth control? Stem cell research? NASA? Global warming? NIH funding? While these people will have advisers to help them judge the issues, ultimately, they won't judge the issue on a scientific principle and that is extremely unfair to the people who want decisions based on objectivity.
It's good to see the AAAS address this under-rated issue, that of public understanding of science. This has been a worsening problem for decades. I hope they follow up and make this a priority, even if they ave to go some "touchy-feely" way (empathy) to reach people.

Re:Just do what Global Warming Advocates Do

[MightyMartian]

You seem to be a pretty good example of how pseudo-scientists try to paint themselves as victims, and thus serve the cause of disillusioning the public to science by misinformation, strawmen and outright lies.

Re:Just do what Global Warming Advocates Do

[MightyMartian]

And to insinuate that weather and climate are the same thing pretty much indicates you don't have the foggiest notion what the hell you're talking about, which leads me to believe that you are probably the last person on Earth I'd want to get information on a climatological debate with.

All science is tentative, but thus far the denier community has tried to push that to an extreme, and are even invoking similar kinds of arguments (invoking conspiracies, questioning the peer-review process, getting lists of "scientists" who disagree with global warming that often include non-climatologists and even non-scientists) that evolution-deniers use.

That's part of the problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

> People have been taught, for several generations now, that causality is optional, that science is for geeks, that geeks are there to serve the jocks, that man needs to serve the state, and that perception is reality. Why would they care about your silly little experiments?

People talking to them that way is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Try an experiment sometime: see how people respond when they're NOT being talked down to. Those perceptions didn't come about by chance. They can be changed and there are methods for dealing with them. But it's easier just to mock the stupid people.

Speaking of which, would an editor mind fixing the 'a studies was discussed' edit in my story? :-/

Re:What we have here

[rthille]

I disagree when you say it's not science at that point. The trouble is that scientists who are trying to communicate to the public ignore the scientific information about how people learn and change their beliefs. Too many scientists think that the average person is just like them; present the public with the data and the theories and they'll make the right decision. That idea ignores the fact that we're all emotional beings, not much different from the apes.

Re:What we have here

[isomeme]

The only thing we can do is teach the scientific method - in schools, at home, in conversations. It's the only weapon we've got, however small.

Of course, one big problem is that the scientific method is usually taught incorrectly. People frame it as if the scientific method explained everything about how actual scientists do actual science; there's this weird image that scientists just mechanically follow a set of steps, and science results.

In fact, of course, the scientific method is merely (though crucially) a way to apply rigorous tests to the results of intuition and imagination. Kekule dreamed that benzene was a ring; no amount of mechanical scientific-method application would have ever resulted in that golden idea. But, having had that idea, he then went into the lab and applied the scientific method to test it, to measure his confidence in the results of those tests. He published his results in a form which allowed others to reproduce his experiments, and to analyze his proposed explanation for the results of those experiments. All that is how science manages to be more than opinion.

But the interesting part, the human part, the part that gets people interested in science, is the very part that isn't subject to the scientif method. I believe it was Brecht who remarked (paraphrased from memory) that science is not a gateway to infinite wisdom, but rather a guard against infinite folly. That's the best summary of the scientific method I've ever run across.

Re:immunization

[ceoyoyo]

Maybe we have to be a little less sensitive. When her baby dies (or is left sterile, or with heart damage) from one of those diseases everyone gets immunized against, someone (better yet lots of someones) should point out that she killed him. The news should carry the story.

I'm irritated that my health plan doesn't properly cover real medical expenses like wisdom tooth extraction or eye exams, but it does cover naturopathy. Why do I have to pay for someone's placebo habit?

You're joking, right?

[ah.clem]

It's not my responsibility to "reverse the trend" - it's my responsibility to make certain that people that choose to be stupid don't get in my way. There is absolutely no excuse for anyone of average intelligence not taking the time to try to understand the world around them.

Ignorance has consequences. Teach people to be responsible for their own learning, and you don't need to "dumb it down" for them. Pander to them and you're stuck as their babysitter for the rest of their lives.

A Sisyphean Task

[Stanislav_J]

Part of the problem, at least here in the U.S. (land of self-centeredness and instant gratification) is that science often fails to give people the answers they want to hear, or the results they want to have.

This is especially true when it comes to medical science. As far as medicine has advanced, there are still diseases and maladies that cannot be cured or even mitigated by current knowledge and practices. It can be very hard, if you are someone suffering from something of that sort, to accept that there may be little, or even nothing, that can be done. Desperation can cause even basically level-headed people to seek out untested or even already debunked alternative treatments that may at best have a mild placebo effect, more likely will do nothing to alleviate their suffering, and at worst can worsen the condition or hasten the person's ultimate demise.

Religion, obviously, can be a powerful impediment to acceptance of science as well. If your faith stands or falls with a literal reading of Genesis, then you will not, indeed CANnot accept scientific evidence to the contrary.

Finally, one thing I've always noted about humans is that we don't like "grey areas." We want answers that are complete, definitive, and satisfying. The fact that science can sometimes be wrong, and theories changed as more evidence is gathered, is unsettling to those who don't understand the scientific method, and leads them to have little faith in its conclusions.

This can only be remedied by not only pushing basic science courses hard and early in school (something way more comprehensive than that which produces the mere ability to answer a few multiple-choice questions on some standardized test), but instruction in reasoning and critical thinking as well. And I don't see that happening, not by a long shot. If you have a child, and want him or her to be scientifically literate, you pretty much have to teach them yourself. Schools today are about establishing minimal (very minimal) levels of ability, and high (very high) levels of conformity. Teaching too much science threatens the former goal, while instruction in critical thinking thwarts the latter.

Re:Article: Most scientific papers probably wrong

[ceoyoyo]

Yes, see it. Note the quote at the end, from a working scientist:

"When I read the literature, I'm not reading it to find proof like a textbook. I'm reading to get ideas. So even if something is wrong with the paper, if they have the kernel of a novel idea, that's something to think about," he says."

Also, the author of the paper points out that replication is more important than the original finding. Generally things aren't elevated to the level of scientific "truth" on the basis of one study. If the public wants to peruse scientific journals or if publish by press conference is going to become an accepted standard, then the public should understand this.

But when your oncologist recommends chemotherapy he is not speaking from the results of one small, unregulated study.

Note also that even if "most published scientific results are wrong," those results are still more likely to be correct than any other result.

True But...

[maz2331]

Then again, every once in a while, someone hits on a previously unknown fundamental breakthrough that turns the rules as we know them on their head. Think Gallileo, Newton, Einsten, et al. It DOES happen.

That said, it's highly unlikely that the inventor of the "free energy" stuff is actually on to anything. I take his claims with a truckload of salt, but am willing to see what is really going on there.

It is possible that he hit on something, but pretty highly unlikely.

"YOU CAN'T GET ENERGY OUT OF NOTHING"

Very true. But if someone DOES hit on a way to tap into something we've been heretofore unaware of, that doesn't make it energy from nothing, just energy from something we didn't know about before -- the same as fusion, fission, and antimatter anniahlation would have been unthinkable in 1670.

SJ Gould was talking about this in the 90's

[NIckGorton]

Stephen Jay Gould wrote an exceptional (and entertaining - bonus) piece in 1994 about selling Evolution to the lay public - combating the Creationist spin that evolution is 'only a theory' by calling it a 'scientific fact'. He justified this with... well crap, I should let the good Professor say it much better than I could: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_fact-and-theory.html [stephenjaygould.org]

Re:immunization

[ScrewMaster]

Why do I have to pay for someone's placebo habit?

Presumably because they're cheaper than real medicine.

Jocks rule, geeks lose

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of your local papers had big articles about high school seniors signing letters of intent to attend one college or another on the football team?

How many had articles about students being accepted to academically prestigious schools (e.g. MIT, CalTech, etc.)?

How much funding is there for new locker room equipment? How much for science labs? (my daughter's high school still has the lab benches installed when the school was built 30 years ago.. they also have artificial turf in the football stadium.)

Re:What we have here

[Scaba]

Of course, one big problem is that the scientific method is usually taught incorrectly.

...which causes people to make unsupported assertions, and then speak in anecdotes and generalities...

People frame it as if the scientific method explained everything about how actual scientists do actual science; there's this weird image that scientists just mechanically follow a set of steps, and science results.

:>)

Re:Just do what Global Warming Advocates Do

[Jarnin]

I just don't believe that there is incontrovertible evidence that climate change is man-made.

The whole "man-made" argument is crap. It was a way to add doubt to the "global warming" statement, which wouldn't be changed even if man wasn't spewing CO2 and Methane into the atmosphere. The fact is the planet is getting warmer. The fact is man has contributed (a lot) to that warming. Instead of playing the blame game for the last decade and a half, politicians on both sides should have been acting on the data. Then again we've only just recently gotten politicians old enough to remember learning about global warming in school, which might explain the sudden sense of urgency.

I do believe the climate is changing. I see enough anecdotal evidence alone to nearly convince myself.

Don't believe it: Know it. Read up on the subject from a wide array of sources and make your own conclusion. When you say "I do believe" you're saying "I haven't actually looked into it, but someone I trust told me so."

The cause is now a political agenda.

It's always been a political agenda since that's the only way anything will be done about it. The Kyoto Protocol was signed by governments, not scientists.
It sounds more like you don't like the side that's cheering that agenda, so this ends up a case of guilty by association.

Re:That's part of the problem...

[Metasquares]

"I'll never understand it" is the typical reply when I show someone one of my papers, and many of these same papers were praised by reviewers as "well-written". I attempt to clarify, and they dismiss it out-of-hand. Part of the problem is the requirement that scientific language must possess a fairly high degree of sophistication to be published - academic writing is very far from the 5th grade level you're supposed to generally write at to be understood. You can't cater to both the reviewers and the general public, it seems.

I don't talk down to people I show my research, but the very act of presenting the research to them in its unadulterated form is tantamount to talking down without saying anything. For that matter, a lot of scientists won't get much of it either, but there's some sort of unwritten rule that says you're supposed to act as if you understand everything written in any paper you ever read on the first run-through - I guess it's there to preserve scientists' egos or something :)

Obscurantism

[Dirck_the_Noorman]

Obscurantism (from the Latin obscurans, "darkening") is the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or full details of something from becoming known. There are two common senses of this: (1) opposition to the spread of knowledge--a policy of withholding knowledge from the general public; and (2) a style (as in literature or art) characterized by deliberate vagueness or abstruseness. One serious problem is scientists (and policy makers) deliberately misleading people with pseudo-science. Scientists regularly use their credentials and objective observers to try to promote their own political or ideological agendas. The solution to this part of the problem isnt just better education for the public - its the scientific community doing a better job of policing itself. For example, anyone claiming "the debate is over" on an area of active scientific dispute should be ignored. Same goes for anyone claiming consensus=science. http://tinyurl.com/23p4la [tinyurl.com] Not surprisingly, these ostensibly credentialed snake oil salesmen are most often found at the intersection of public policy.

Re:Don't let facts get in the way of good fun

[johnsonav]

I would argue that the USA's peak of scientific interest was during the late 1960s when the space program was a national obsession and every second kid had a Nasa poster on their bedroom wall.

You're probably right. But, I'm sure there were plenty of people back then that thought there were too many kids interested in The Beatles, not science. If anything, I believe that what has been lost is a generation of physicists and biologists to the siren's song of computer science. If the Apollo program was what drew them in the '60s, then dot-coms and OSS draw them now. There is no other field today where the barriers to entry are so low that almost anyone can make a real contribution.

The first step towards solving the problem, in my opinion, is stop making college degrees the minimum requirement for employment, regardless of major. There are too many people attending college today simply looking for any degree. This results in over-enrollment in so called easy majors, and less funding for science and engineering. You don't see nearly as many foreign students in those programs because, for them, the job market back home requires real knowledge, not just a piece of paper.

Good Science

[pugglebait]

"In other words, it's not enough to merely report on it as an expert. You need to make sure your report exudes a sense of honesty, openness, empathy, and maybe even a hint of humor."

Come to think of it, this sounds a lot like al gore when he presented his global warming video. exuding honesty, openness, empathy and humor are great for getting out the message. of course the message itself needs to be good science. in the case of gore's video, he shows a graph of global warming and c02 levels. the undeniable truth in the graph is that measurements have shown that c02 levels and global temperatures seem to be completely connected. yes they are, but now the way gore explains it. if we could zoom in on any part of the graph, we would see that c02 level changes come *after* changes in global temperature, not before. c02 levels respond to changes in global temperature, not the other way around. and to be honest, true science only concerns itself with measurements. it can only infer causes, but it can never prove causal relationship completely. there will always be some element of doubt.

(putting on my fireproof underwear now ha ha!)

the fact that gore (a politician, not a scientist) got a nobel prize for sharing "good" scientific work that contains clear errors like the one i just shared is just further evidence that the only scientific views that are allowed to be shared are the ones that are politically beneficial to those in power. and so good science will always take a back seat to politically beneficial "science". just consider the work of dr. michael behe concerning irreducible complexity in molecular biology. *he* should have got a nobel prize! he made one of the greatest discoveries ever, and yet because his findings are an "inconvenient truth" for the people in power calling the shots, his findings have been quietly and powerfully buried. (nevermind that none of his peers have ever refuted his work.)

for those of you who are into conspiracy theories, check this out. it may be just another whacko idea with no truth to it at all, or it may be a very good explanation for what is happening in our scientific communities today.

whacko conspiracy link [conspiracyarchive.com]

Re:Yeah, but can you 'prove' it?

[themushroom]

Good science isn't necessary (in the public's eye) when it's a celebrity doing the talking. Seriously, consider Jenny McCarthy talking about autism, Tom Cruise talking about mental health issues, or Paris Hilton on drunken elephants. [grinning on the last one] While science and truth should matter, and in the end do, people still prefer the people who play doctors on TV -- or play the fool on TV, radio, magazines, etcetera -- to the folks who actually know what the f#&* they're talking about.

Re:Just do what Global Warming Advocates Do

[Neil Blender]

Great. You sat in an undergraduate lab last week so the debate is over. You know what? Newtonian physics are good enough for you. They are good enough for most people. That's undergrad for you.

I am no climatologist, but I have 20 years of post graduate scientific experience. I spent 10 years in academic biochemistry research and 10 in commercial bioinformatics. I can analyze data. I do it for a living. I have probably been doing it longer than you have been alive. Again I will reiterate, to state that the "debate is over" is arrogant and self-serving. The debate is rarely, if ever, over.

Socrates was right

[MagikSlinger]

"The clear message of the session was that a command of facts is never going to be good enough to convince most segments of the public, whether they're parents or Congress. How the information is conveyed can matter more than its content, and different forms of communication may be necessary for different audiences."

Translation: Sophistry trumps logic in public debate.

Exudes a sense...

[gmuslera]

... is a big problem. Your report could look honest, open, have some humor etc etc, and that will have nothing to do with the fact that it is good or bad science. You can even honestly think that your are an expert in whatever topic is about. But still, it could be very wrong. As in the universe there is no single atom of justice (Pratchett dixit), the same goes for that kind of bells and whistles you want to see in the "truth" (or how it is presented). Wonder how much scientific reports presenting that the earth were flat, or the center of the universe, or that we were created by a superior being had all those attributes, even with the addendum of being of "common sense" at that time.

Still is pending how you distinguish good from bad science, of both can be presented in similar ways. Maybe some trusted authority/organization/etc can say that it is good, or at least, that the followed methodology is right.

Re:What we have here

[Chandon Seldon]

Science is not for everyone, and you are just going to make a lot of good people feel stupid, inferior, or worse if you push too hard and make them aware of things they can't and won't understand.

Bullshit. Having a basic rational understanding of the world is absolutely "for everyone". If someone can't and won't understand the basics of the scientific knowledge that we as a species have struggled for all of history to figure out then they *should* be made to feel stupid - ignorance certainly isn't a virtue to be respected.

Re:Bull. People want "Truth".

[Fantastic Lad]

Part of me wants to respond with, "Fucking 'A'!" and another part, the older and more mature part says, "You're right, but it's important to remember that even self-destructive choices which make us crazy to watch unfold are nonetheless valid choices. The best you can do is keep speaking truth, and do it in a way which isn't vengeful.

I've watched friends become church-goers; kneel before a priest and promise to believe in biblical claims. How can anybody "promise" to believe anything? Isn't belief the final product after a process observational and logical cross analysis has taken place? All you can realistically promise to believe is what your mind tells you is true. And since we are constantly learning, then we cannot promise, ever, that our belief system will not change when new information enters our awareness. Such promises can only be kept if we effectively stop learning and stop cross analyzing. --So either my friend was just nodding and repeating what he was told to say at his religious confirmation ceremony without thinking about it, or he was actually really promising to limit his rational thought processes to only those which would allow continued "belief" in biblical doctrine; a virtual lobotomy. Either way, it was a very disheartening event to witness; this is a guy who is otherwise smart and aware and caring. Luckily, it's possible to change your mind, and so all I can do is continue being myself and allow him to grow as he best sees fit. But it has been a challenge to remain respectful.

I'd been invited to his confirmation and he really wanted me to be there, so I went. It was my first time inside a church in many years, and I was reminded again why I cannot stand religion. --I was the only person, I think, in a church filled with almost my entire community, sitting there thinking, "This is all absolutely fucking insane. All these people are crazy! Aren't they hearing this stuff? Don't they SEE what is going on here?" --I've read the bible, and I've studied the other various religions, I know how cults work, I know how social control works, I know how mind-programming works, and I know enough psychology to know how and why people can be seduced, or worse, how (as you point out), they WANT to be seduced. I can tear the whole thing apart like the sand castle that it is, and I've done this over and over. Anybody with a brain can do it; it's fish in a barrel stuff.

But I held back on that day. I'd been invited by my friend, who knows full well my views on this, so all I could do was agree to watch him do this thing.

Brrr. I'm sorry. I'm venting.

Or perhaps I should say. . .

Fucking 'A'.

-FL

Re:immunization

[AJWM]

There are serious questions regarding the safety of immunizations, especially regarding thimerosal preservatives.

Thimerosal preservatives haven't been used in vaccines for children in years. Long enough, in fact, that the much ballyhooed (but never demonstrated) link between that and autism has been disproven because autism rates haven't decreased since the discontinuance of thimerosal.

Re:immunization

[dbIII]

Unfortunately this is not longer the case. It is also the case that a naturapath may pay as much and spend as much time for their certificate as an educated medical professional. It is a very worrying series of confidence tricks that is being perpetrated on students as well as the sick. To be quite serious a roleplaying game book contains more credible information on herbs than some of the stuff these people are given to read.

Re:Entertainment value

[etherlad]

Before things like TLC or Discovery, there were almost no infotainment outlets.

I'd like to amend that to remove TLC. Sadly, we're well beyond the days of James Burke's Connections and the like. There's not much science involved in 2-day home renovation shows, fashion makeover shows, or pimp-my-vehicle.

The closest they get is the occasional ghost investigation, which can hardly be called science.

Re:Don't let facts get in the way of good fun

[mdfst13]

There are too many people attending college today simply looking for any degree. This results in over-enrollment in so called easy majors, and less funding for science and engineering. You don't see nearly as many foreign students in those programs because, for them, the job market back home requires real knowledge, not just a piece of paper.

I also think that you'd find that many foreign students have their educations funded by someone who cares what major they choose. In the US, the primary sources of funding are loans (controlled by the student), grants (given by the government for any major), need based aid (given by the school for any major), and parents. Grants and need based aid could be focused on particular majors but are not.

I've toyed with ideas about programs that would be more corporately focused. For example, what if student loan recipients were chosen by companies? The company would be on the hook for hiring the student after graduation. The student would be responsible for maintaining good grades in a major approved by the company (note: students would be able to pick the company that offered a major that they wanted). Students who flunk out, change majors (without a new sponsor), or who decide not to work for their sponsor have to pay the loan back. If the company cuts back staff and does not hire the student, then the company eats the loan. If the company hires the student, the company is assumed to have adjusted the student's pay appropriately. After some number of years, the student will finish the loan period and can switch companies without paying back the loan.

Another possibility would be to replace federal grants with corporate tax credits. Companies could pay for a student's tuition and mark it down as taxes paid. Obviously it would be more efficient for a company to pay tuition for a student it would like to hire than someone who is interested in an entirely different field.

A big problem with US education before college is the shortness of the school year. Why not take a page from Germany's book and switch to ten 216 day years in elementary and secondary school (the same 2160 days that come from twelve 180 day years)? Then go to a two year program that could be more general than a university degree (i.e. something like Engineering, Science, or Liberal Arts rather than Electrical Engineering, Physics, or Philosophy) and more specific than the final two years of secondary school currently are. Afterwards, students could go to the regular university with a more consistent and focused presentation. For people who aren't college inclined, they could use those two years in a trade school.

Re:Just do what Global Warming Advocates Do

[Neil Blender]

There is A debate on weather its the main cause of global warming, IMO (and thats all it is) it is, but that doesnt even matter as it IS causing global warming (it just may not be the largest cause).

And that is my skepticism. Is it the main cause? 90% 40%? 5%? And that little tidbit of information matters very much.

Look, I've been recycling since the 70s (since I can remember), I ride my bike to work almost every day, year around. I am an environmentalist. But as a scientist, I simply will not swallow politicized agendas regarding science. I will not take a party line, ever.

Re:immunization

[Belial6]

The problem is that it goes both ways. If you look at the data on the chicken pox vaccine, it is clear that it was pushed through for profit reasons and not because of good science. So, should we mock the people that did or did not get their kid the chicken pox vaccine that lead to their death, or at the very least didn't prevent it. Now, I'm not saying that all vaccines are bad, but if a more suspicious individual than me took a look at the chicken pox vaccine, I can certainly understand why they would start getting nervous about other vaccines.

Re:Entertainment value

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the perfect segue for me to vent over my in-laws new belief in dragons. They saw a special called, "Dragons: The Myth Made Real" on Animal Planet a few months ago and decided the whole thing must be legit since it was done in documentary style. They saw, what they believed to be, actual footage of a team of paleontologists studying a dragon carcass (preserved in ice since the middle ages you see) coupled with computer simulations explaining how they flew and breathed fire. They now are perfectly convinced dragons existed and have no problem bringing this up in public. I looked up the show on Animal Planets site and while they acknowledge it was all in fun they only do it with a wink and a nod so that people that want to believe can ignore that fact and continue believing. Searching around online shows that my in-laws weren't the only ones fooled, or at least running with the idea. The bottom line is there are too many people that aren't intellectually capable of seeing the difference between good science and mind-bashingly stupid entertainment (or politics) with a paper-thin veneer of tranparent gauzey factoids masquerading as science. Package it however you want people will believe what they want to believe.

Re:Don't let facts get in the way of good fun

[penix1]

I've toyed with ideas about programs that would be more corporately focused. For example, what if student loan recipients were chosen by companies? The company would be on the hook for hiring the student after graduation. The student would be responsible for maintaining good grades in a major approved by the company (note: students would be able to pick the company that offered a major that they wanted). Students who flunk out, change majors (without a new sponsor), or who decide not to work for their sponsor have to pay the loan back. If the company cuts back staff and does not hire the student, then the company eats the loan. If the company hires the student, the company is assumed to have adjusted the student's pay appropriately. After some number of years, the student will finish the loan period and can switch companies without paying back the loan.

There are many problems with this approach. First, fields seen as "not profitable" by corporate leaders would suffer greatly. Fields such as paleontology, philosophy, history and even pure mathematics would go the way of the dodo bird. Next, those who wanted one of those unpopular majors would be forced into a government student loan that has dwindling users meaning the cost would go through the roof (as if it isn't already there) simply because nobody except those unpopular majors are getting them. Lastly, the whole concept of "general education" would die because companies wouldn't pay for classes that don't directly relate to whatever job they have lined up for the student. That is just a small sample of the problems. I''m sure others can think of more.

Re:What we have here

[ryeinn]

What depresses me the most, as a high school physics teacher, is how right you are. Too often I see a lack of desire to actually think about things, rather than rely on the data.

I want to scream at some points when the students are doing labs/I'm grading their labs.

"Data is king! It determines truth. If it doesn't match with what you expected, one of two things is going on. Either your expectations were wrong or you didn't do a good enough experiment."

You'd be surprised (or maybe not, this is Slashdot...) how many students think "I did the experiment once, my data is perfect, nothing could have possibly gone wrong." If they would shut up from talking about how their weekend went and actually think about what they're doing it would all be so much easier.

Ok, I've gone off topic. My apologies. But seriously, stop, examine data and where it came from. Don't go by who told it to you, go by what was told.

Geek to geek

[R3d Jack]

combined with an apathetic and undereducated public lead to widespread ignorance

Would you listen to someone who views you in that way?

People don't listen to geeky experts because

1. The average person has much greater emotional intelligence than the average geek. I had to learn that the hard way. We think we are communicating factually, and the average Joe is hearing something completely different, because he is listening on a broader and higher level. The things he is hearing don't invite trust.
2. Experts are so 1950's. I grew up in the 60's, when "Question Authority" was a radical slogan to put on your bumper. Now days, no one accepts authority automatically, but I remember when they did. Bottom line, the experts put forth a lot of bad information that led many people to do things they deeply regretted. Remember the insulin treatments in "A Beautiful Mind"? That's why I don't trust experts, either.
3. People learned long ago that experts are just as political and dogmatic as fundamentalists, and they can be just as misguided.

BTW, some of the postings make me embarrassed to be a geek. I don't see disrespect as a sign of intelligence.

Re:Yeah, but can you 'prove' it?

[Aglassis]

So what is the belief system that suits moral atheist agenda?

Simple, as atheist's selfish agenda is to hate God and deny his revealed truth, no atheist can be moral. Nobody "doesn't belive in god" they know he is real, they just deny him, which is evil and therefore immoral.

You cannot be moral without God, therefore you cannot be a moral atheist nor a moral atheist agenda

Utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, virtue ethics, etc., don't require you to worship some supernatural entity in order to make moral judgments. Some people like to pretend than morality only exists with obeying some made up deity, but that only shows how shallow their imaginations are that they need to read what actions are explicitly allowed or disallowed from some book to know whether they are acting good or bad. Two moral judgments that illustrate this point are the treatment of homosexuals and the issue of stem cell research. No non-deistic moral system would condone averse treatment of homosexuals or the banning stem cell research. Only those who don't have a moral 'system' but instead some arbitrary list of dos and don'ts would. Another example is prevention of cruelty to animals. The religious folks adjusted their dogma only after the lead of the 'immoral' atheists who pointed out that it was not a moral action to stage cockfights, stage dogfights, place livestock in cruel conditions, or torture animals.

I think I'll be just fine with my atheistic moral system. It forces me to think why an action is moral instead of searching for some verse in a holy book that I can interpret to my whims.

Re:easy mode

[Samarian Hillbilly]

Which is why the should teach scientific method in school and not just scientific "facts" (which change all the time anyways, as they should). For most people science is "what most scientists believe", or worse, "what the press thinks scientists believe", as opposed to a very successful method for uncovering the laws of nature.

Re:What we have here

[megaditto]

I am not talking about basic rational understanding here. That clearly should be given to everyone.

However it's quite unreasonable to expect most normal people to understand all/any aspects of modern science. The only way you could get them to pay attention is by rubbing their noses in their intellectual inferority. I'll do this to you now to illustrate:

Sketch an IR spectrum of HCl.
Draw a circuit diagram for a current-to-voltage converter using a stock OpAmp.
Write down a Euler-Lagrange equation for the shortest path between two points on an n-dimentional surface of your choice (you pick n).
Describe an active site of acetylcholine esterase and how it interacts with a nerve agent of your choice.
What is a holomorphic manifold?
How do you cite a sound recording in MLA format?
Name four European heads of state contemporary to Bismark.
Why is mercury liquid at room temp while thallium isn't?
What is Kalidasa famous for?
How is ICP-AE different from a normal AA?

See, you probably are quite a smart person able to make a living and take care of yourself. Most probably you succeeded in life without knowing a single answer to these freshman-level scince intro questions. Should we fault you for not being interested in any of this?
Conversely, there is no reason to expect that most people will care or understand these basics either, much less "real" modern science.

Re:immunization

[Belial6]

You don't seem to understand the problem at all. The problem isn't that the chicken pox vaccine causes a small amount of side effects. The problem is that the vaccine DELAYS infections of chicken pox. With polio, even if the vaccine only delays the desease, you are better off being paralized as an adult is better than as a child. Every day you don't have the desease is a win. Chicken pox on the other hand is a major childhood illness, but if delayed into adulthood becomes seriously life threatening. Your comment that children who get chicken pox would "presumably died anyway" is exactly the kind of belief in bad science that you are complaining about. Catching chicken pox as an otherwise healthy child is less dangerous than playing high school football. On the other hand, if people do not regularly get their vaccine, they massivly increase the risk getting the disease as an adult, which is truely life threatening. The problem isn't that there is contaminated chicken pox vaccines. The problem is that the specific vaccine is a trade of short term profits and saving a week of hassle for a very serious threat to life as an adult.

So, given your post, you are clearly a victim of bad science.

Re:What we have here

[utnapistim]

"What we have here is a failure to communicate .." What we have here is a marketing failure.

I don't think so; I believe what we have here is - if anything, a failure in education. People are taught what to think, not how to think. The moment you know how to think and see an affirmation that has no support (in infotainment - for example) you can realize that. When you don't know how to think, you'll probably say "I'ts true - I saw that on discovery ( I do that more often than I'd like to :-( ).

Sadly I've learned more about what science is from Hawking's Brief History of Time and an interview series with Feynman on youtube than I learned in 16 years of formal education :(.

Re:Don't let facts get in the way of good fun

[cp.tar]

And if you really think that those 'easy' courses are easy, you should try a few of the upper level courses in a subject you don't like. Then you'll see what 'easy' really is...

Here, here!

My majors (well, if I were studying in the USA, they would be called majors) are English, Linguistics and Information Science, all with a reputation of being "easy".
Information Science, the way it is taught here, really is an easy major, no question there.
Linguistics is a field that is relatively obscure and, in a small country such as Croatia, not very profitable.
As for English — well, everyone speaks English, so everyone can teach English and everybody can be a translator or even an interpreter. Yet for some reason most of them would still make a mistake such as "here, here!" instead of "hear, hear!" (yeah, that was on purpose), or even "shoe, shoe!" instead of "shoo! shoo!" (I kid you not).

I dropped out from Electrical Engineering and Computer Science once upon a time and switched to these "easy" majors, and let me tell you: the only subject that really is easy is the one you enjoy doing. I flunked certain courses in EE and CS even though some of my colleagues, who subsequently graduated, would come to me for explanations — I was simply no longer interested in doing the hard work necessary to pass the exams. And even now, studying the "easy stuff", I see very few people really good at it.

It's all easy if you don't look harder into it.

Creationism is an insult to reason and rationality

[Eravnrekaree]

Probably the most misleading instance where science has been ignored or seriously damaged is the teaching of creationism in science courses or downgrading of evolution by christians who do not like it because it conflicts with their religious beliefs. To teach creationism as coming anywhere near science or being something of which there is any real positive evidence of it is simply lying to children. Evolution is an extremely well supported scientific theory that has a large amount of physical evidence to back it up. Science must be based on physical evidence, not religious superstitions and fantasies. To mention creationism in the same breath as science and suggest it is a competitor to evolution is an insult to everything that science is and that which has made so much progress to our understanding the world better and getting the truths about the universe. If religious fantasy had prevailed, we would still think the earth was flat and stars were little fires several miles above the surface, and that the edge of the earth dropped off into an abyss populated by monsters who ate ships that dared fall into it. Creationism like these theories should be in social studies where it belongs or used only as an example of old, outdated absurd ideas that science has proven wrong.

Agenda driven 'Science'

[ku4tp]

In this long list of comments, if this point has already been made and I missed it, please accept my apologies. The main outlet for scientific information is what most call 'main stream media'. As long as those in that industry have an agenda (and make no mistake - they do) you will get anything that is reported spun to their way of thinking no matter what the facts are. They are not the only ones, of course. The so called 'expert scientists' also have their own agendas and most have nothing to do with advancing science. So any findings they may produce will also get skewed so as to further those agendas, whatever they may be. How do you get integrity in these two fields? Many claim it but few seem to deliver it. And many who do are silenced by the agenda driven. These are normal human failings. I don't have a solution. But until you can insure what the public digests is not tainted with personal opinions and agendas you will never get what you are striving for - the acceptance of real science by that public.

The Metric System

[toddhisattva]

I think a major barrier to science education in America is our refusal to adopt (what is here called) the metric system.

"Gram" and "millimeter" may as well be Martian.

There's an advantage to reporting your mass in kilograms - the numbers are smaller so you feel better about them!

Re:Entertainment value

[hypnagogue]

Say you have only a tooth fragment of a bobcat. That piece of information alone isn't much to go on, but if you also have a more or less complete skeleton of a house cat, and a skull and left hind foot of a lion skeleton, these three pieces of information together now tell you a lot about the likely size and general shape of the bobcat

Because, as everyone knows, the saber-toothed cat was 50 feet tall and ate litters of baby hippos for breakfast.

You've captured the reason why the pronouncements of science are so easily dismissed by the public: they've watched during their lifetime as most major scientific theories have been completely debunked and replaced with newer, ever more confusing theories. That may be the method of science, but to the average layman it looks a lot like deception.

Here's a clue: try using words like "maybe" and "possibly" to capture true nature of an untested (or untestable) theory. As it turns out, most folks are turned off by arrogance, particularly when flavored by a history of spectacular failure. Add that to the fact that scientists tend to harp on the layman's "ignorance", which is usually nothing of the sort. Here's a hint: that's verbally abusive behavior. As a result "scientist" is now easily conflated with "first-order jerk". A little bit of humility would go a long way.